Syd Barrett Biography

Born Roger Keith Barrett, January 6, 1946, in Cambridge, England; died of
complications from diabetes, July 7, 2006, in Cambridge, England.
Musician.
Syd Barrett was one of rock music's legendary names, as both a
gifted songwriter and a cautionary tale. One of the founding members of
British rock band Pink Floyd, Barrett helped shape their unique sound but
plummeted into substance abuse and mental illness as they went on achieve
worldwide success. His
Times
of London obituary called it "one of the most enigmatic and
saddest stories in rock'n'roll," and noted that while
Barrett vanished from public life after 1970, "he continued to
exert an eerie fascination for generations of future
musicians—perhaps because his fate reminded them of the slender
thread by which creative talent can hang."

Barrett was born in 1946 in Cambridge, England, and became active in the
university town's music scene during his teens, joining a band
called Geoff Mott and the Mottoes with future Pink Floyd founder member
Roger Waters, whom he had known since elementary school. In 1964, Barrett
moved to London to attend art school, and a year later, with Waters in
London, too, joined a band that the latter had formed with Nick Mason
playing drums and a keyboardist named Richard Wright. Barrett came up with
their name, the Pink Floyd Blues Band, in homage to two Southern blues
guitarists of the early twentieth century, Pink Anderson and Floyd
Council.

Pink Floyd, as they soon became known, started as a cover band playing
R&B tunes, but Barrett began to write music, and the group's
first singles, "See Emily Play" and "Arnold
Layne" became minor hits. Both were included on their debut LP,
Piper at the Gates of Dawn
, which was released in August of 1967, and Barrett's sly
witticisms, coupled with a unique guitar-playing style, quickly earned the
band a cult following in England. As a guitarist, he used an echo machine
and various slide techniques, including gliding his Zippo lighter along
the strings. When the band traveled to the United States to promote the
record, however, Barrett's increasingly odd behavior became
problematic. They appeared on the weekly hit-record television showcase
American Bandstand
, but instead of singing he kept his mouth closed, refusing to lip-sync
along. The band also toured with Jimi Hendrix, and on stage Barrett might
play the same chord over and over, or simply start detuning his guitar in
the middle of a song. His condition seemed linked to overindulgence of
LSD, a powerful hallucinogenic drug, which he was reportedly taking daily
by then.

Fearing a crisis as their popularity and contractual commitments
escalated, the members of Pink Floyd brought in Dave Gilmour, another
Cambridge native, as a back-up singer and guitarist. Barrett's
condition deteriorated during the recording of their second LP,
Saucerful of Secrets
, but he did have a brief solo career. With Waters and Gilmour helping
out, he recorded enough material for two albums,
The Madcap Laughs
and
Barrett
, both of which were released in 1970. Each went on to achieve enduring
cult status among music fans and subsequent generations of musicians,
among them Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. "It was like you were
hearing him in the process of losing it," Coyne said of these solo
records in an interview with
Los Angeles Times
writer Geoff Boucher. "He was there in the studio and he was
thinking, 'I can't sing like I thought I could sing; I
can't play like I thought I could play.' And the music he
made was stunningly original."

Barrett, never formally fired from Pink Floyd, drifted away from public
view despite the promise of his solo records. At a London gig in October
of 1970, he walked off the stage after four songs, and two years later
there were rumors that he had put a new band together called Stars, but he
failed to turn up for the live shows. He returned to the studio one more
time, in 1974, but "it became obvious to all concerned that his
muse had finally deserted him," asserted his
Times
of London obituary. He spent most of the next 32 years living at his
mother's home in Cambridge, though he did keep a flat in London for
a time. One of the more tragic elements of Barrett's story is the
success that Pink Floyd went on to achieve without him; their 1973 release
The Dark Side of the Moon
became one of the best-selling albums in rock history and spent a
record-setting 14 years on the
Billboard
200 album chart. Two songs from their next work—the title track
"Wish You Were Here" and "Shine On You Crazy
Diamond"—are considered the band's tribute to their
founding member. At the time of its recording, Barrett shocked his former
bandmates when he dropped by the London studio unannounced and they at
first failed to recognize him; it marked the last time they were ever in
same building together.

Deeply reclusive inhis later years, hiding out from fans who made a sport
of seeking him out, Barrett even turned down a large sum of money from
Atlantic Records to record just three or four songs entirely from his
house. He died on July 12, 2006, from complications from diabetes, at age
60, and is survived by a pair of siblings, Alan and Rosemary. Though he
had vanished many years before, news of his death saddened many who had
known him at the peak of his creativity, and even those who did not. Rock
legend David Bowie issued a statement that lauded Barrett as "so
charismatic and such a startlingly original songwriter," according
to the
Los Angeles Times
. "His impact on my thinking
was enormous. A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond
indeed."